Distracting ourselves from the grind

Pinterest is Not How We Mother

There are a lot of things I never thought I’d do as a mom. One is picking up poop with my bare hand. Another is biting my child back. Most recently, it’s cutting images out of children’s books for a stinking crafty birthday party project.

But here we are.

The idea of course, came from the internet, as all good ones do these days. The downside to that is, it doesn’t feel remotely unique, and half the coolest parts look both homemade-cute and way too time-consuming for my level of commitment and interest. I’m looking at stuff on Etsy that’s got the balls to charge $75 for 25 birthday party invitations or $2.50 PER envelope alone just to have a cutesy Babar theme.

Seriously. $75 for your kid’s hand-graphic-designed birthday INVITATIONS. Y’all know they end up in someone’s trash, right? I blanche at the Rite Aid when they’re $7.95 and just have a crappy dorky dog image on them. Then find myself thinking, well, the baby LIKES dogs. She doesn’t have any special dog in her life, but…

Can we all just admit at this point, we know full well these party efforts are not for the kids?

They’re for us, they’re all about us. They’re about the ridiculous attachments we have to our own childhood, the lack of sex we’re having (perhaps) and largely, the inability we have to let go of everything that came before the vastly difficult time that can vastly be defined as ‘getting used to’ parenthood?

We’re rolling the kids on the floor in a mess of green play-dough and sitting back flicking caps at them. Points if you hit your own kid. It’s for ALL for us.

Drinking beer from baby bottles (from Offbeatfamilies.com)

That doesn’t mean I want to skip the enchanting invites. So I went forth wanting a Babar party but wanting a damn cheap one. I imagine the way Faye Dunaway would say that in Mommie Dearest. Damn cheap.

Again, at Rite Aid, is where I got my idea. No, I would not buy the overpriced handmade-from-old-books envelopes ($2.50 per hand-stitched envelope) I’d seen on another freaking site. But I could steal that idea.